Chris Long Was Bothered by Marijuana Headlines that Buried the Lede
Chris Long found himself in the news last week when he “admitted” to using marijuana as an NFL player. The story stemmed from an appearance on The Dan Patrick Show, a radio hit in which he revealed that he enjoyed his “fair share” of the ganja during his 11 year career.
Our headline was titled “Chris Long Says He Used Marijuana ‘On a Regular Basis’ During his NFL Career,” which I think was reasonable. We quoted that shorter passage about him using weed and talking about the drug as an option for pain management, then finished the story with the longer quote in which he spoke about the dangers of alcohol and tobacco and how society views those substances in comparison to the cheeba.
Today Long did another media spot, this one on the Golic and Wingo show, and said he was a bit miffed by the reaction to his comments, claiming that some media outlets were burying the lede while some folks were missing the point entirely.
Said Long:
The buzz is not a good thing. I was kind of bothered that I saw so many articles written, especially the click bait ones that tried to bury the lede. The lede is not that I smoked marijuana, the lede is that I’m talking about trying to destigmatize it and hopefully the NFL will hear some of their players talking about it, former, or current, if you have the balls, saying, ‘listen, something needs to change.’ It’s changed in other sports. In the NBA you’ve got a ton of guys who have talked about it – Al Harrington, Stephen Jackson, Matt Barnes, guys like that who have been very forthright, and I feel like we lag behind as a league in the way we deal with it.
That’s consistent with what the 34-year-old recent retiree has said in the past about marijuana. He also didn’t like a certain word that popped up in those articles, after the jump:
I hate the word ‘admission’ because I don’t think you’re admitting to using something that harmless, personally.
….
I also don’t have any reason to lie. During my career I always advocated for decriminalization and reform of marijuana. I’ve always, if you follow me on Twitter, I’ve kind of always not so explicitly hinted at that stuff. So I’m not the first to admit it and I’m certainly not trying to be an activist. I think the reaction has been interesting, because even people that support you, it just shows the stigmatization is so ingrained. A lot of people like now are tweeting at me and every tweet is like, ‘hey man, are we gonna spark one up dude?‘ I’m like, chill with the stereotypes. Marijuana is a part of people’s lives. It’s not their life. And obviously then you have the minority, which is less than 10 percent of the responses I’ve seen, which are like, ‘That stuff’s the devil,’ this, that, and the third. Maybe it’s because old people aren’t on the internet.
So the takeaway is not that Chris Long is a pothead. He did not have a marijuana leaf tie dye poster on the wall of his UVA dorm room. He does not rip an eight-foot bong in the Tweeter Center parking lot before the Cypress Hill show.
He just wants to advance the story, get people to look at marijuana in a different way, and have serious discussions about it.